SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Don't you hate it when your portfolio springs a $400 million leak?

We thought the Film Forum had it bad when we had to cancel our screening of "Robot & Frank" last Thursday because the hurricane waylaid the print somewhere in New Jersey, and then our server went down, and our newsletter was delayed, and I don't know -- just everything.

But the bad week of Robert Miller (Richard Gere), investment and hedge fund superstar giant in the tautly elegant, electrifying thriller "Arbitrage" puts our recent pain to shame. Not only has his Russian copper mine bottomed out, his French mistress throws a hissy fit when he's 15 minutes late for a steamy assignation, his adoring daughter and putative business partner (Brit Marling) starts taking a second and third uneasy gander at the cooked books of the company, his devoted wife (Susan Sarandon) may be hipper to his wiles than she looks, and worse, much worse, the bank he hopes will take his possibly worthless empire off his hands might be blowing smoke. Then there's Mr. Miller's sleep deficit, resulting in some very reckless driving, which in turn excites the interest of an uncommonly persistent and street-wise New York cop (Tim Roth, doing "his best turn since Pulp Fiction." (USAToday).

This is writer/director Nicholas Jarecki's first dramatic feature. His older brother made the Oscar-winning doc, "Capturing the Friedmans."

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Another made the acclaimed films, "Freakonomics" and "Why We Fight." His parents are commodities traders, so movie making about ill-gotten gold chip gain is maybe in the blood. But the genius of the film isn't its confident take on American entitlement and greed.

The big news here is the stand-out work of that perennially underrated, one-time poster boy Richard Gere, now inching up on his 63rd birthday.

The Oscar-worthy Gere, more than a few reviewers have enthused, has never been better, more engaged with a role, more nuanced in his reading of Miller's terrifying, soulless charisma. "His rapt, watchful performance is a thing of toxic beauty," Rolling Stone declares. From Entertainment Weekly: "Playing this luxe silver fox, Gere has never been more likable or alive on screen."

More alive than the half-dressed Gere as the high-price callboy when he's home alone, picking out his clothes and singing along with Smoky Robinson in "American Gigolo"?